


I’m not in love, damn it!

by FeliciaAmelloides



Series: A Oneshot a Day... [127]
Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: Gay, High School AU, In Denial, Jack and Ralph having sexual tension, M/M, Maurice being Maurice, Modern AU, Possibly an American AU???, Ralph and Piggy being best friends, Rumours, closet, fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 17:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeliciaAmelloides/pseuds/FeliciaAmelloides
Summary: Meaningless title is meaningless.Ralph is hiding more-than-platonic feelings for his rival and fellow member of the football team, Jack Merridew.He goes to his best friend for advice over it.





	I’m not in love, damn it!

**Author's Note:**

> This is absolute trash, but hey, I haven’t written Jalph in a while!

“Left! Left! N-no wait, your left! Or is it right? Probably right! Right! Shi-, um fuck! I mean, g-goddamnit I have no idea.” Maurice sighed, walking off the pitch as the football coach glared at him. The other boys on the team sniggered and whispered, but he didn’t care. Getting sent home early meant more time with his dog, his blog and his people (couldn’t get that last one to rhyme- he’d work on it).

The captain of the football team, Ralph, brushed his blond fringe away from where it stuck to his head with a frown, sighing in exasperation at Maurice’s antics. He never seemed to understand directions, particularly when put under pressure in a high-energy game. The accidental swearing only sealed his fate.

Once the game was over, Ralph could relax. There was no pressure to perform. He could just go straight to the library to get tutoring for all the subjects he was bad at. It would be fun. Well... not exactly _fun_ per se, but it wouldn’t be awful either...

Ralph was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t realise the ball was in his hands. In fact, he was so spaced out that he also failed to notice a certain redhead flying at him until they were both pressed into the mud, cheeks flushed and faces too close together. For a moment, both just stared at each other in a mixture of surprise and abject terror. Eventually Jack just glared at him irritably, but there was something else in his eyes which set some strange thing ablaze within Ralph. Blushing and shifting uncomfortably to hide what was definitely _not_ there in his opinion, Ralph pushed Jack away from him and passed the ball, returning his glare and hoping it didn’t seem too forced. The redhead just stalked back to his position on the pitch, face more crimson than his hair.

By the time the game was over, Ralph was so desperate to get out of there that he didn’t even bother tying his shoes, instead running out of the changing room, very deliberately avoiding looking in Jack’s direction, and dashing down the hallway to the library.

But the drama wasn’t over yet. As soon as Ralph burst through the doors to the hall of books (eliciting a chorus of shushes from those around him), he tripped on the untied laces and went crashing to the ground for the second time that day. He groaned in pain and embarrassment, trying to ignore the glares of everyone else in the room.

A hand was extended to him suddenly, shocking his senses somewhat. Ralph looked up to see a familiar head of dark-ish, kind of non-existent, pretty ambiguous actually hair (okay, the hair wasn’t the best way to describe him) and shiny old-fashioned glasses. 

“Piggy.” He said by way of greeting. The fat- sorry, _big-boned_ \- boy pouted petulantly.

“My name is not Piggy, Ralph. And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t call me that.” Ralph just laughed and brushed him off, moving to the table in the centre of the library allocated for students trying to work. The two sat down beside each other and Ralph drew a textbook from his bag. Piggy took it and flicked through to find the page they had been working on last. He smirked a little when he found it, something Ralph had noticed he did whenever he achieved something, no matter how small. Smug git.

Not that he minded.

“So how was practice?” For all his ‘conscientious, uptight honour student’ airs, Piggy was as interested in the ‘Grand Saga of Ralph and Jack’ as every other student in the school. There was a rumour that someone had bet $300 on them getting together by June. It was late May, and holy shit was that why Maurice kept trying to lock them into closets overnight? 

No time to think about it now. Ralph answered, “Same as always. Maurice got kicked out for being an idiot, Bill scored more goals than any of us and the one time Jack and I made eye contact was so awkward that it didn’t happens again for the entire hour and a half that was left.” 

Piggy whistled, “That’s a lot.” He remarked, pushing his glasses further up on his nose. Ralph simply frowned and jotted down a few sentences next to one of the points in the book, “You need to shorten it. Shorthand is a necessary skill in note-taking, Ralph.”

“Shut up, Piggy.” Ralph said with a faint tone of annoyance. He wasn’t in the mood for   
Piggy’s pedanticness (was that even a word? He had no idea).

“This is important, _golden boy_. How are you going to pass your exams if you don’t even pay attention in your tutoring? Jack isn’t everything you know.” A strange jolt shot through Ralph at that comment. Without thinking, he retorted,

“He is to me.” Then the words settled in and he almost fell out of his chair in mortified horror, “Oh god what the bloody hell did I just say?” Finally Piggy allowed himself to laugh, slapping a hand over his mouth when the librarian gave him a pointed look from across the room.

“You’re so in denial.” He managed to get out through chuckles. Ralph blushed yet again and looked away. 

“Shut up.” He repeated, not knowing what else to say.

For another hour, the pair studied quietly. Piggy went through anything Ralph wasn’t sure about patiently and bore through his sudden, completely unprovoked rants about how insufferable Jack Merridew was, and how much he hated him, and how much he wished they were friends again as they were at the start of the year, and how handsome he really was in certain lights from certain angles, and how kissing him might feel, and what he’d wear for their wedding, and how exactly he’d brutally murder him the next time he looked at him like _that_ -

You get the idea.

Ralph talked about Jack _a lot_. 

When it was time to leave, Ralph rose from his seat slowly and turned to look at Piggy.   
“What am I supposed to do?” He asked softly. Piggy understood what he meant without needing to ask. He always did.

“Stop dawdling and just approach him alone. That, or waste the rest of the year pining over him before you realise you should have gone for Simon all along.” Piggy patted the blond’s shoulder in some kind of awkward attempt at comfort. It helped.

“What? Come on, there’s no way that Simon is into me. That rumour died out years ago.” Piggy just shot him a knowing glance.

“ _In love, it is better to know and be disappointed, than to not know and always wonder._ ” Ralph wasn’t sure if his best friend was referring to Jack or Simon, or something else entirely. He didn’t know what that meant.

“Where’d you get that from?” Piggy did that annoying smirk thing again.

“Oscar Wilde, although the Internet argues over who said it first. I’ve seen many renditions and adaptations over the years-“

“You know, you could have just said ‘the Internet while googling motivational life quotes to boost my self esteem’ and I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.” Ralph cut him off before he could go into a know-it-all tirade.

Now it was Piggy’s turn to tell him to shut up.

*

As Ralph walked home, he pondered the evening’s events. A lot had happened, and he didn’t know how it was going to end. But there was one thing he now knew for sure, both from that heated look at practice and from Piggy’s ‘advice’ (if you could call it that) in the library.

He had to confess to Jack. And soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Rogice and one-sided Ralmon/Ralphiggy all exist in this AU that I’m never going to use again (probably).
> 
> In other news, I’m now working on the chapter-fic Gotham rock band (?) thing that I mentioned in yesterday’s oneshot! Since I’m guessing you came here for the Jalph tag (or the LotF tag, maybe) rather than from my Oneshot A Day series, that means absolutely nothing to you. Oh well!
> 
> Prompt- A jock and a nerd being best friends.
> 
> I think cliche all-American high school archetypes from the movies are stupid, but after seeing a comic on tumblr depicting this I thought it was a cute idea and enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Original Number- 189.


End file.
